


Waiting

by thedarlingone (Curuchamion)



Category: Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hoth, Wedge is the best commander
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 09:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16116035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curuchamion/pseuds/thedarlingone
Summary: The rendezvous point is two days away -- two long days alone in hyperspace, unable to receive transmissions. Two days with no hope of finding out whether Hobbie is dead or alive. Two days with nothing and no one to pull him out of his head.





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by Mayhem21 and camshaft22, and inspired by a conversation on the Rogue Squadron Discord channel.

His fingers are too numb to feel Hobbie's pulse anymore.

That's what Wes tells himself, kneeling in the snow by the broken body they've fished out of the crashed snowspeeder. He can half-hear Wedge shouting into a comlink, above and behind him -- can't drag his attention away from Hobbie long enough to make out the words. His fingertips are blue against the too-pale skin as he fumbles to find the thready pulse that has to be there, _needs_ to be there. The red streak of blood down the side of Hobbie's face has ceased its sluggish trickle -- frozen, only frozen in the cold, please, please, _please._ He lays his hand gently over Hobbie's mouth and nose, can't feel any hint of warm breath.

The practical part of his brain, the part that never stops working, forces him to turn away for a second, to find his gloves where he tossed them aside. He shakes the snow out of them, drags them back onto his chilled hands. Tears force themselves out of his eyes, freezing almost instantly in his lashes and on his cheeks. He can't, he can't even tell if his best friend is alive, and there's a tightness in his chest like a block of ice around his heart.

A hand lands on his shoulder, and he jumps, almost falling over sideways. It's only Wedge, looking harried, with a small cluster of medics behind him.

Wes nods in understanding, reaches up; Wedge takes his arm and helps him up. Wes stumbles and leans on him for a second, half-frozen knees refusing to straighten.

"We have to get to our X-wings," Wedge tells him, kindly, regretfully. Wes turns away, back toward Hobbie; the medics already have him on a stretcher and are carrying him to their shuttle. Wes reaches out in distress, wanting to follow.

"Wes," Wedge says, still in that gentle voice with steel underlying it, his hand firm on Wes's arm. "Please. You're going to need your snubfighter."

He's right. He's right, and there's no room in the medevac shuttle for Wes anyway, crowded as it is with medics and with Hobbie's lanky, mangled body. Wes drags his eyes away from the shuttle as the ramp begins to close. Unable to speak, Wes turns back to Wedge and simply nods, ready to follow orders.

Wedge leads him at a stumbling half-trot back to their snowspeeder, landed near the tangled wreckage. Wes scrambles into the gunner's seat and pulls down the canopy for Wedge.

Echo Base is almost deserted when they get back. Only a few X-wings still stand in the hangars. Wes half-tumbles out of the snowspeeder, following Wedge toward their fighters, parked side by side.

Wes's X-wing is closer to where Wedge parked the snowspeeder. Wes stops at the base of the ladder; Wedge pauses, turning to him. "You have the coordinates for the rendezvous point?" he asks.

Wes knows the coordinates, but his breath suddenly catches in his throat. He grips a rung of the ladder, trying to steady himself. The rendezvous point is two days away -- two long days alone in hyperspace, unable to receive transmissions. Two days with no hope of finding out whether Hobbie is dead or alive. Two days with nothing and no one to pull him out of his head. He suddenly can't stop remembering the crushed wreck of Hobbie's left leg, the empty space where his prosthetic right leg should have been, the way his unconscious body gave and twisted in ways it should not have done. Hobbie is dead or dying, and Wes can't so much as distract himself.

Wedge pulls him into a rough, fierce hug for a moment. "Wes, look at me," he commands, stepping back again, and Wes is able to come back to himself, to meet Wedge's gaze.

"There's no room for our X-wings on the medical frigate," Wedge says, steady, a little slow, giving Wes time to process the words through the hurrying tangle of fear and worry that fills his brain. "We have to fly them to the rendezvous point. But here's what we're going to do."

******

The jumbled swirl of hyperspace snaps back into starlines, then into stars. Wes glances sideways; Wedge's X-wing is still there, just ahead and to the side of his own. "Wes?" says his comm headset.

Wes toggles his comm. "I'm here." His voice is steady, but the panic is right there underneath the surface of it.

"How are you holding up?"

"Better than I would be," Wes admits. Seven hours into their flight, he's still holding it together, thanks to Wedge. Without these hourly check-ins, with nothing to interrupt the spiraling pattern of his fears, he isn't sure he could cope.

"Do you think you can make it another hour?"

Wes lets out a squeaky little noise of tension that he'd never make if anyone but Wedge was there to hear. Wedge needs the truth, needs to know the limits of Wes's strength and sanity, but admitting he _has_ any limits is so, so, so hard. 

"We're going to get through this," Wedge says, calm and confident and reassuring. "I'm right here, I'm not leaving you. For as long as you need me, I'm here."

Wes takes a few long shaky breaths, steadying himself. "Thanks," he manages, his voice a little wobbly.

"You want to try for another hour?"

"Well, we have to get there sometime," Wes half-jokes. He adjusts the nav computer for their next jump.

"And hyperspace deceleration in sixty minutes from… mark," Wedge says. Their astromechs tweetle acknowledgments, and they're off again.

*****

"I don't want to lie to you, Wes," Wedge says, his voice still maddeningly reasonable.

Wes flops his head back and sighs dramatically. He doesn't have much range of motion while he's strapped into his pilot's chair, and between the stress and the length of the journey, he's got the fidgets. 

"I'm sorry," Wedge continues, and he _is_ genuinely sorry, and that's the worst part.

"I kriffing wish one of us had a hypercomm," Wes says bitterly. He needs to hear that Hobbie's going to be okay, even if it's a lie, and Wedge is too damn noble to promise something that may not turn out to be true. Part of Wes appreciates that, appreciates knowing that he can trust Wedge no matter what. The rest of him, well…

"I know," Wedge says, sympathy clear in his voice. "I wish we did too."

"Another hour?" Wes asks. They're twenty-eight hours in, another twenty-odd to go. He's been dozing, catnapping, off and on, but Wedge is reluctant to stretch the length of time between check-ins too far. And with good reason; Wes knows he's on edge.

"You sure?" Wedge asks, clearly worried for Wes's mental state.

"Well, nothing's going to change if we keep sitting around here," Wes points out, and Wedge makes a little noise that might in other circumstances have been a chuckle.

*******

"Three and a half more hours," Wedge says comfortingly. 

"Three and a half," Wes repeats. At this point it's like a lifeline. Wedge is the all-too-fragile tether holding him to reality. His own time sense is faltering, minutes stretching out like hours or days. He's slept, some, not enough. It isn't the now half-hourly check-ins keeping him awake, but the fact that every time he closes his eyes he sees Hobbie lying there, cold and silent and still. He knows he's going to reach the rendezvous point only to find that his wingman is dead, has been dead since they left Hoth. He just wants the waiting to be over.

"Wes? You still there?"

Wes lets out a rattling little sigh. The noise expresses more than any words how he feels: vibrating with tension, numb and empty-hearted from an excess of grief he can't yet touch. "I'm here."

"Good man. I'm going to set our next check-in for fifteen minutes from now. Okay?"

"Okay." They've been stopping every half hour for… a while now. Wes knows he's in bad shape if the numbers are escaping his brain, but there's nothing he can do about that right now except keep going. Once he reaches the medical frigate, once he finds out… whatever there is to find out… then he can rest. Grieve. Breathe.

"Three, two, one, and mark."

*********

When they finally reach the fleet, Wedge doesn't ask after Hobbie immediately. Wes knows why. If the news is bad, Wedge doesn't want him breaking down while he still needs to fly.

The _Redemption_ 's hangar bay is buzzing with activity, shuttles landing and taking off, collecting wounded from other ships, sending recovered crew back. Wes settles his X-wing into place bare centimeters from Wedge's, saving what limited space they can, and drops from the cockpit without waiting for a ladder.

Wedge is already flagging down a nurse. Wes hears the name "Klivian". He slows his steps, suddenly unwilling to finish this, not wanting to hear the words. _Flight Officer Klivian is dead._ He's going to break down sobbing right here in the hangar bay, and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. He's failed his best friend.

But the Twi'lek nurse's green face doesn't take on the formal sympathy of announcing a loss. "Flight Officer Klivian is in bacta," she says easily. "I can take you to him if you want."

For a few heartbeats Wes is still numb, blank, waiting for the finality of grief to descend on him. Then he realizes, his heart leaping in his chest even before his conscious mind catches up. "He's alive?" he blurts out, half still unbelieving.

The nurse smiles, sharp-toothed and forbidding, but friendly. "He's alive. Come, I'll show you."

As they fall in behind her, Wedge slips his arm around Wes's waist. "I told you," he says conversationally.

"You did _not,_ " Wes retorts, slinging his arm across Wedge's shoulders. "You were very careful to not ever say he was going to make it." 

Wedge nods, conceding the point, then glances over at Wes almost shyly. "Are you okay with that?"

Wes takes a couple of seconds to consider it as he walks. "Yes," he says at last. "You told me the truth as you knew it. Anything more… wouldn't be _you._ " Wedge will never lie to him, no matter what happens. He may push Wes far past the limits of his own strength, but he'll stay with him, holding him together, every step of the way.

Wes liked and trusted Wedge before. After this, he knows, he'll follow him anywhere, even into the depths of hell.


End file.
